


Four Times Ash Williams Didn't Know What To Do, and the One Time He Did

by Missy



Category: Evil Dead (2013), Evil Dead (Movies), Evil Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Family, Kidfic, Romance, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 04:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Times Ash Williams Didn't Know What To Do, and the One Time He Did

1:

Cheryl was sobbing, her face turned inward against Ash’s collarbone. They’d been playing leapfrog down by the old mill and Cheryl’s foot had found a hunter’s snare, the skin and bone shredding. She’d gone down screaming and Ash had grabbed his pocket knife, prying her poor foot free, binding her with a sleeve torn from his teeshirt. There was nothing more for him to do but stop the bleeding, to hold her fast to his chest as they made the mad dash back home.

“Mom!“ he shouted, the screen door slamming the kitchen-side slats as he holds his baby sister up like an offering. “We were….I was….I tried…” He gulped back his tears. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted, the words rushing over each other like the water boiling the Wednesday night pasta.

Their mother stood like an angel in the halogen light of the kitchen, a tomato in her open palm. It rolled to the floor on a squeak of horror at the sight of her little girl’s twisted ankle, and the pain in her son’s face. She had her keys, forgetting the half-made dinner and the rest of the world entirely.

“Oh sweetie,” she said, hot fingers caressing Ash’s jawline, “let me help.”

2: 

“Aren’t you gonna come to bed?” Linda’s voice caressed his frayed nerves and made him smile in spite of himself. Ash’s head bowed low, toward the pile of homework that lay still unexplored upon his desk, secreting his smile in his palm.

“Can’t. Professor Johnson’s been riding my ass all week about this draft,” he said, rubbing his sore eyes. “I’m gonna be up all night finishing this presentation.”

“I could help,” she said pertly, scooting toward the desk, her arm wrapping around his neck. 

Ash chuckled, leaning into her soft touch. “Honey, you know I love you, but I’m pretty sure you don’t understand molecules and combustion points…”

“And why your coefficients are five points off.”

Ash’s pencil slipped from his grip, and he slowly turned his head in her direction. Linda smiled her most angelic smile, her fingers curled around the chair’s rail.

“Let me help you,” she demanded.

For once, he listened.

3: 

His fingers were raw from digging through the dirt, bleeding from the scraping and fighting, both internal and external. 

He sat back on his metal-padded knees, the cool wind kissing his flesh. But the rubble of the cabin provided him with no clues. The ground dotted with clothing, pans, bricks and pans. Everything a man might wish to forage but the one thing he most desired.

The necklace was gone.

“I don’t understand…” he started to say, scratching the dirt, desperation. He flew to his feet. “Y’put me through hell and you didn’t even leave me anything to remember her by!”

Thunder rolled. God survived, but his answer was merciless; a rain that drove him toward the main road. A moment later, a blinding light accosted his eyes.

When it faded and Ash dared to scan the road ahead, Sheila stood among the leaves, the sunshine hitting her eyes. 

“What?” he wondered.

“Why…” she began, then took a careful step forward.

The rain pounded on, drowning his confusion out. Ash moved again, this time on impulse, and opened his sopping cloak to offer her shelter and she ran to his arms.

An hour later they sat eating truckstop sandwiches with ice-cold sodas while their fellow patrons stared at them in abject confusion. 

Sheila was the one who broached the subject. “Whatever shall we do?” she asked, between large uncouth bites of her first hamburger.

Ash paused, frowning his stony frown. He didn’t know, that was the problem – the plan was and would always be to go home and pretend that the past week hadn’t happened, a notion made impossible by her presence. 

He considered a gruff reply, a wicked retort. Then her fingers crossed the table to curl about his.

“Then we shall help one another,” she decided. 

The corner of his mouth tilted upward as his fingers stroked the silky underside of her pinkie.

4: 

The baby’s head barely filled Ash’s palm, her off-white wool sweater scratching his chest as he picked her up from the cradle. She curled into the warmth of his chest and makes a whining sound of complaint, rubbing into the steadiness of his heartbeat, the warmth of his chest.

She didn’t want a bottle, and her diaper was dry, but her misery continued. 

Sheila stood in the doorway, an apparition, her white nightgown forcing him into a flashback. Suddenly she was there, taking the baby, patting the gas from her belly with a gurgling gasp. 

Ash watched her curl contentedly into the warmth of the mattress, disbelief creasing his features. 

Sheila’s fingers kissing the middle of his back still made him jump.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he muttered, covering the declaration with a cough and an askance look.

She knew him better, her look a snare that captured him for all time. “Neither do I, milord. But we shall learn together.”

5: 

She hasn’t stopped crying since they found her on the side of the road. Sheila runs out of ways to soothe her, but Ash remembered this road; it hadn’t gotten less shadowed in thirty years’ time.

On the fifth day she comes to him, shaking in the doorway, her single arm extended.

“Help me,” she says

And he doesn't say ‘help yourself’. He doesn't say ‘get out of my face.’ 

“I will,” he says.

And the road to hell drops its fire-blossoms down their future path.

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains characters from **The Evil Dead Trilogy**. The author has no legal claim upon these characters, and this fiction is a work of fannish tribute, from which no money was made.


End file.
